


It's the Little Things

by autumnstar



Category: Lucifer (TV)
Genre: Chloe gets flustered, F/M, Lucifer was in a boyband
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-02
Updated: 2017-10-02
Packaged: 2019-01-08 05:28:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,055
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12247953
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/autumnstar/pseuds/autumnstar
Summary: All the odd things Lucifer does during their latest case are going to have Chloe believing that her partner really is the Devil. (Loosely set around 2x04, before girl’s night. Lucifer’s trying to distract himself.)





	It's the Little Things

“Professor Harry Bradford,” Chloe read from her notes as she slammed the car door shut. “Died from a blow to the head, probably in the early hours of this morning.” She entered a large white house, with Lucifer following close behind her, and saw the rest of the police crew already at work.

“He was found by his cleaner, a miss… Rosa Lee, this afternoon,” she muttered back to her partner, and nodded towards a young, brunette woman sat at the bottom of a narrow staircase. She was in tears.

“She didn’t do a very good job, did she?” Lucifer asked, far too loudly for Chloe’s liking, as he looked the house over. It was an old place, filled with old, dusty things, but then Chloe didn’t find that too surprising. Their latest victim was a history Professor, and by the looks of things he had liked to collect artifacts from the periods he taught about.

“I guess she didn’t get a chance.” Chloe grabbed his arm and led him towards Bradford’s office, where everyone else was gathering. “You know, what with finding a dead body and everything.”

Lucifer was thankfully silent after that, at least for the moment. He let Ella tell them what they’d discovered so far and, as crime scenes went, it was pretty straight forward. Their latest victim was a pepper-haired man in his mid-50s, in a simple brown suit that finally made Lucifer break his short silence. Chloe tried not to listen to his fashion tips directed at a dead man that would never be able to use them, and instead asked Ella to carry on with her report.

At some point, her partner must have decided to wander off, because the second time he chose to interrupt Ella he was on the other side of the room.

“Either there’s more to our plain Professor than meets the eye, or,” Lucifer called over, and with a wave of his hand drew Chloe’s attention to a red jacket hanging from the back of a chair, “This doesn’t belong here.”

He was right, she realised as she walked over to their latest bit of evidence. It wouldn’t have fit Bradford, or the petite figure of his cleaner, and the bright red didn’t seem to suit the Professor’s aesthetic of beige, brown, and a slightly lighter beige.

“It’s not his or Rosa’s,” Chloe agreed, and batted Lucifer’s hand away when he reached out to pick it up. “We’ll have someone _with gloves_ look at it.” She tried to bite back a smile at the look on her partner’s face. They were in a crime scene, near a dead body, she couldn’t start smiling just because Lucifer looked so unhappy about having his hand swatted away. It was such a childish reaction, it was almost endearing.

“Right,” he nodded, taking his eyes away from his hand and back to the red jacket. “Do you think it’s the killer’s?”

“It’s possible. Or whoever it belongs to might have been here last night and seen something.” Chloe didn’t like to speculate, but Lucifer was staring at her expectantly, as if he thought she had more to say. How did he know she was already coming up with several theories?

“Could be a crime of passion,” she noted. “Our killer gets upset, grabs something from nearby, and…”

“And the Professor takes a one-way ticket to Hell,” Lucifer finished for her, then decided to correct himself, “Or Heaven.” There was an amused glint in his eyes when Chloe looked back at him, and a smile that was far too bright for a murder scene. “I mean, in a suit that boring, he must have gone upstairs.”

He could be so weird sometimes. She didn’t think she’d ever understand his obsession with Heaven and Hell, and she decided this wasn’t the time or place to dwell on that. Turning her back to him, Chloe started to look around for a potential weapon. The victim had died from a harsh blow to the head, and the Professor’s whole house was filled with books, artifacts, and instruments, most of which had the potential to be used as a weapon.

“Then the killer panics and runs,” the Detective went on, trying to play out the scene in her head. The body lay near the office doorway, and if it was a crime of passion, then the blunt weapon was likely grabbed at random from either of the two rooms he lay between.

Chloe was about to point all of that out to Lucifer when she heard her partner laugh, and turned to see him typing something on his phone.

“Hey,” she said and walked over to him. “Lucifer?” _Nothing_. He was far too engrossed in whoever it was he was talking to, and no, Chloe wasn’t jealous that they held Lucifer’s attention. She put her hand over his and finally, that got him to look at her.

Glancing at the phone screen as she took it from him, she caught a glimpse of Maze’s name and rolled her eyes. _Of course_ he was texting his shady ex-bartender at a crime scene.

“What is with you today?” Chloe had seen how hyperactive he could be, and most days he seemed to be full of eternal glee, but this was something else. It was almost as if he was trying to avoid something, she just couldn’t figure out what. Hopefully it wasn’t her.

“Lucifer,” she said gently, “if you need someone to talk--”

“Oh, lovely!” He interrupted, and Chloe watched with concern as he abandoned her side and rushed off to the next thing that had caught his attention.

Hurrying after him, she spotted what had distracted her partner now and couldn’t believe it. Even after working together for so long, he somehow found new ways of surprising her.

“It’s been so long since I played one of these,” he told no one in particular, and placed his fingertips lightly over the strings of a large, golden harp, sat in the middle of the library.

“You’re kidding,” Chloe muttered, and watched him skeptically as he got ready to play. She’d thought he was joking until he started to pluck at the strings, and then there was no denying that he really could play.

She had no idea what he was performing, it was a tune she’d never heard before, but it was beautiful and it was sad, and it stunned Chloe into silence. It was nothing like the more modern songs she'd heard him playing and singing in Lux.

Everyone else in the room, and the neighbouring room, forgot their work and moved to watch her partner play. His long fingers picked effortlessly at the strings, and Chloe was mesmerised. There was something magnetic about the song he had chosen, a lot like his weird hypnosis trick he liked to use in interrogations. People were drawn in and couldn’t take their eyes away, until he finished and looked directly at Chloe with a pleased grin. It was only then that she realised his little show had been just for her.

“Lucifer, that was… Where did you learn to play like that?” The question came out more breathlessly than she’d expected, and she realised just how quiet the rest of the house had fallen. Behind her, the forensics team and officers suddenly remembered they had jobs to do, and after muttering compliments to Lucifer, quickly hurried back to work.

“I was in the Heavenly Choir,” he explained, as if it were obvious, and stood up. He must have noticed the look of disbelief on her face then, because a second later he nodded and sighed; completely misreading her reaction. “I know. I suppose you could call it my boyband days, before I went solo.” That left Chloe with even more questions than she’d started with. So he could play the piano _and_ the harp perfectly? Was he from an extremely musical family? Maybe they’d been entertainers or something.

It was only when Lucifer tried to step around her that Chloe stopped him, with her hand pressed flat against his chest. He looked down at the contact in surprise, then turned a questioning look at the Detective.

“You’ve got to stop touching things. That could be evidence,” she pointed out belatedly, but Lucifer only smiled again and stepped back to the harp. With little effort, something that should have been impossible, he lifted the huge harp with one hand and tested its weight.

”No,” he declared, and set the instrument back down. “That’s much too heavy for our little red riding hood.” Then he stepped around her and started to inspect the Professor’s extensive library.

“That’s much too heavy for _anyone_ ,” Chloe insisted, mimicking his accent, but he only hummed in response and reached for one of the old, leather-bound books, hidden away on the top shelves.

He was going to drive her mad one day with all these unanswered questions, she was sure of it. Eventually, he’d have her believing his claim of being the Devil. A very musical Devil. It actually sounded plausible when she thought about how weirdly good he was on the harp, and the piano, and at singing, too.

Chloe shook herself out of that supposition, and tried to focus her mind back on the case. Now wasn’t the time to worry about Lucifer and his Luciferness.

“No, put it back,” she told him, taking the huge book from his hands. “You’ve got to stop touching everything, Lucifer.” Chloe immediately regretted her choice of words when he raised his eyebrows at her suggestively. “Just… Stop it. We have to go and… and question the cleaner.” Chloe turned, trying to push certain images out of her head as she tried to place the book back onto the shelf, and realised that she couldn’t. She was too short to reach the top shelf, and she could practically _feel_ Lucifer smiling as he watched her. A second later, the book was plucked from her hand.

“Lead the way, Detective,” Lucifer said as he made an effortless show of sliding the tome back into place on the highest shelf. She walked away quickly from her brilliantly annoying partner, and found Rosa Lee still sitting in the hall of Bradford’s cluttered home.

* * *

Chloe introduced them both to Rosa, after insisting that Lucifer follow her lead, but the young woman’s gaze was immediately drawn to him. She couldn’t ignore the way her partner smiled at the attention, and nodded sympathetically at the tear-stained woman. It seemed that most things were a show with Lucifer, but Rosa was thankful for his sympathy, which made it easier for Chloe to lead into the questions.

They asked her how she’d found the body, why she hadn’t found Bradford sooner if he’d been there since the morning, and if she knew who the red jacket could have belonged to. Rosa answered the first two questions together; she should have been there in the morning, but she’d been late to work and had rushed straight to his office to apologise. That didn’t offer them anything useful, but then the cleaner suggested that the jacket may have belonged to one of Bradford’s students. They were always calling around, apparently, to ask the Professor something or to borrow something.

By that point, Chloe noticed, Lucifer looked bored. His attention was drifting away to the people working around them, and the Detective decided to quickly try and grab his attention back.

“Quite the collection the Professor kept,” Chloe noted, and the young girl nodded while dabbing her eyes with a tissue.

“Yeah, it was a lot to clean,” she smiled slightly and sniffed. “I even had to go over all his taxidermy stuff.”

“Oh, you poor thing,” Lucifer soothed, and the young woman looked up at him with such wide, teary eyes, that she missed Chloe’s faint smile. _Good_ , she thought. She’d suspected talking about Bradford’s collections would grab his attention again.

“He was such a smart man,” Rosa continued, taking Lucifer’s interest as an incentive to keep talking. “Strict,” she quickly added, “but he just wanted people to learn.”

“Of course,” Lucifer nodded solemnly, and then his smile was back and Chloe knew where this was going. She watched with fascination how his smile alone seemed to stop Rosa’s tears, and she leaned towards him unconsciously. “And our dear Professor fulfilled that desire, didn't he?” Rosa nodded earnestly. “So what's yours, hm? What do you desire?”

This kind of trick, Chloe decided, was exactly how she could picture the real Devil being. Not that she thought Lucifer was the real deal, maybe, but she could easily imagine the whole thing with Eve and the forbidden fruit playing out this way.

“I...” He leaned a little closer, encouraging Rosa to finish whatever it was she wanted to say. “I want to open a bookstore.”

“Is that it?” Her partner’s smile dropped, and he seemed disappointed. “You’re so young, and reasonably attractive, you don’t want anything more… nefarious?”

“No? I love books,” she explained, but now she was talking to both Lucifer and Chloe. “But the Professor would never let me look through his, he only ever lent them out to students.”

“Well,” Lucifer straightened up and grinned, “He’s not here to stop you now, is he? Why don’t you go and explore his collection?”

“What?” Chloe finally found her voice and turned to her partner in disbelief.

“Well, we’re done questioning her, aren’t we?” He looked at her as if he couldn’t understand her objections to having Rosa wandering through the library, and she felt herself being drawn into his dark stare. Not in the same way as their hypnotised suspects, but there was something deep in his gaze that she couldn’t look away from. For just a moment, Chloe could believe that he was the immortal angel he claimed to be.

Then the moment was suddenly broken, he turned his dazzling smile back to Rosa, like he thought Chloe’s silence was answer enough, and shooed the cleaner off towards the library. She went without a word, not even a protest for having to step back into the Professor’s office. With all of her Detective skills, Chloe didn’t have a clue how he managed to convince people to blindly follow their desires.

 _Right_ , she thought wryly, _because he’s the Devil._

“So,” Lucifer clapped his hands together and was already looking around for something else to do. “I suppose we’ll need a list or something, of all the Professor’s students?”

“That’d help, but we won’t know for sure which came to his house,” Chloe answered, and started to walk back in the same direction Rosa had been ushered off to. “Maybe Ella found something in the pockets of that jacket. I’ll ask her to-- Lucifer?” He wasn’t following her. She turned around, and he was gone. Chloe didn’t know whether to be glad for the sudden quiet, and the sudden lack of a distraction, or disappointed that he’d ran off somewhere without telling her.

“Thanks, Lucifer,” she mumbled to herself and made her way to Ella.

* * *

Chloe and Ella spent some time running through their theories of what might have happened, and both agreed that if their killer was a woman, then the weapon had to have been something heavy to kill Bradford in one blow. They just couldn’t see anything that fit the rectangular imprint Ella pointed out on the back of the man’s head. That’s when Lucifer decided to make a reappearance, another tome held open in his hands.

“Fiat justitia ruat caelum,” he recited and closed the book. “ _Let justice be done, though the Heavens fall._ One of my favourites.”

“Where have you been?” Chloe frowned.

“Upstairs. The man’s bedroom was more like a second library. I mean, Dad alone only knows how the poor sod got anything done in such a tiny bed.” He put the huge tome down and beamed at her. “Maybe we could go and find out for ourselves?”

Chloe shook her head. _No_. _Nope_. She wasn’t going to respond to that.

“You actually know Latin?” She asked instead, and it was her partner’s turn to frown.

“Of course I do, Detective. I speak everything.” He seemed so genuinely bemused that Chloe didn’t already know that, that despite her previous annoyance at him, she couldn’t help smiling.

“Right, because you’re...” She pointed at him, not wanting to actually say the word, and Lucifer finished for her.

“The Devil,” he nodded.

“¿Hablas español?” Ella asked from behind her, and Chloe wished she wouldn’t encourage him.

“ _Todo_ , incluyendo español,” Lucifer answered and the Detective saw Ella’s eyes light up.

 _Oh, no_ , Chloe thought, _don’t--_

“Nice!” _\--praise him._ “You are so good at this, dude.” Her partner’s smile somehow widened even brighter, and he looked to Chloe as if to ask, ‘ _why aren’t you impressed, too?’_

“We don’t have time for this,” she shook her head and her partner’s smile finally faltered. “We have to work quickly, Lucifer.”

“Oh, well,” Lucifer purred and leaned closer to her, “If you want me to go _faster_ , just say so, Detective.” There was definitely a double meaning behind that reply that Chloe was _not_ going to think about. She bit her tongue, stopping herself from saying anything, and walked away. They were on a crime scene, for God’s sake. It was bad enough Lucifer kept touching everything and distracting her, without him putting thoughts of him _going faster_ for her into her head.

Then there was that creeping suspicion that was always there when she saw Lucifer do something especially odd; things that should have been impossible. She couldn’t believe he was the Devil, that would have been even odder and even more impossible, but she couldn’t help wondering...

Behind her, she heard Lucifer excuse himself and leave Ella, then the telltale sound of his ridiculously expensive shoes rushing after her. Chloe didn’t need to turn around to know that he was watching her, she could feel his eyes on her as she looked around the room. She wasn’t looking for anything in particularly, she just needed to distract herself from her partner’s teasing and his wandering gaze.

“What are you thinking?” He asked, and she was shocked by how serious he suddenly sounded. She glanced at him, noted his sober frown, and wondered how he’d managed to switch so quickly from joking and showing off, to showing an interest in the case.

“I’m thinking we won’t find anything else out until we get that murder weapon and Ella’s ran some prints,” she told him honestly, and he nodded thoughtfully and looked back at the bookshelf Chloe found herself in front of. He carefully reached in front of her, pulled out the book in front of her face, and flipped through it.

It was in another language, the only recognisable word she saw was the word ‘ _lux’_ , and of course Lucifer seemed to have no problems reading it. He paused to skim through a couple of the pages, and smiled roguishly as he read a line out loud.

“ _Da mi basia mille, deinde centum, dein mille altera, dein secunda centum_.” He looked so pleased with himself when he’d finished reading to her, that Chloe couldn’t stop herself from smiling back, but something tugged again at that creeping suspicion in the back of her mind. The detective part of her brain wondered if it was normal for a nightclub owner to know so much Latin. Maybe the odd phrase, she tried to reason, but even to her untrained ears his pronunciation had sounded spot on. She couldn’t picture a club owner being so multilingual. The Devil, on the other hand...

“What does that mean?”

“I’d prefer to show you than tell you, Detective.” He leaned in front of her, so close that Chloe caught the rich scent of his cologne, and lingered there for a moment as he slipped the book back onto the shelf. Their faces were so dizzyingly close, and his gaze had unashamedly dropped to her lips, that she just couldn’t pull herself away.

“We should be heading back to the station,” she decided, but her feet wouldn’t move from their spot in front of Lucifer.

“There was one last thing I wanted to show you,” her partner was serious again, and he beckoned her to follow him back into the Professor’s office.

For the first time that afternoon, he didn’t pick up whatever it was he wanted to show her. He just nodded at something scraggly and black standing on a shelf behind Bradford’s desk.

“Is that…?” She wrinkled her nose a little when she realised what she was looking at.

“A stuffed cat,” Lucifer nodded and stepped around the desk for a closer look. “With a rectangle base and,” he stage gasped and looked at her, “blood!” Chloe followed where he was pointing, and could just barely make out the reddish-brown stains on the wooden base underneath the cat.

“He was killed with a taxidermy cat?” That was certainly a first, and for once she didn’t blame Lucifer for his amused smile, not really.

“It’s funny, isn’t it?” Why did she get the feeling he was laughing at a joke she wasn’t privy to? She watched Lucifer look at the dead cat, as if he was remembering something, and then he nodded. “I think I’ll call him Church.”

“You are not keeping the cat, Lucifer. We’ll get Ella to check it for prints, you can come with me.” She took his hand to stop him from reaching for the creepy murder weapon, and pulled him away.

* * *

A quick word to Ella was all it took to finally wrap things up at the scene, at least for the time being, and her partner seemed to be more than ready to leave.

“Well, since we’re all done here,” Lucifer sighed, “let me drive you back?”

She hadn’t expected that. Their day had already been busy before the call came in about Bradford’s discovery. She was starting to feel tired, and suddenly felt self-conscious that her partner must have been able to _see_ that.

“What, and break every speed limit on the way?” Chloe teased. “I’m fine driving us to the station, really.” Lucifer just smiled back and bowed his head slightly.

“I insist, Detective. I...” he paused, like he was unsure if he should say any more, then decided to carry on, “I simply want to make sure you get there safely.”

“You know, that’s oddly sweet.” She could hardly turn him down now, could she? “What did you do with my partner?”

“I’m still your same, dashingly handsome partner, Detective,” he returned her teasing, but she suspected he was only half-joking, and before she knew it he’d taken her hand back in his and was leading her out of the house.

She let him guide her away as the forensics team started to dust Church for prints and bagged him up, and told herself that it was okay. Lucifer might have driven with all the recklessness of a man that genuinely thought he was immortal, but the sooner she got back to the station and finished work, the sooner she’d be home to read Trixie her bedtime story.

It didn’t matter how weird he could sometimes be on cases, or how inappropriate, there was more to Lucifer than what he presented to the world. Despite all of his weirdness, and occasional rudeness, he could be so caring and thoughtful without really having to try. It was the little things that had changed her mind about him. His desire to see her back safely, his support and suggestions on cases when he wasn’t touching things he shouldn’t, and the tender smiles she only ever saw him give to her. Chloe really must have been tired to have started to fall for his delusions. Speaking other languages and playing expensive instruments, didn’t make a person evil or prove they weren’t human.

“Thanks, Lucifer,” she said once they were outside, and Lucifer turned to grin at her.

“You’re most welcome,” he replied, and after a brief pause added, “Chloe.”

 _No_ , Chloe decided firmly. There was no way that the man who held the car door open for her, or sat beside her in the driver’s seat with such a soft smile, could be the Devil.

**Author's Note:**

> I really wanted to write something a bit funnier for Deckerstar after Can’t Let Go, which was originally meant to be a lot lighter itself. I think I sort of managed it this time. Kinda?
> 
> The second Latin line that Lucifer says to Chloe is from Catullus 5, and means, “Give me a thousand kisses, then a hundred, then another thousand, then a second hundred.” That’s why he’d rather show her than tell.
> 
> The Spanish is (hopefully) meant to say, “Do you speak Spanish?” and, “Everything, including Spanish.” I would have had Ella speak it more, but I’m not fluent and I didn’t want to get it completely wrong.
> 
> And finally, Church is the name of the undead cat in Stephen King’s Pet Semetery that goes around killing things. Lucifer finds that name amusing ;)


End file.
